“At some point, it finally got to me,” Kooda said when we spoke this morning. “I was like, ‘This is stupid,’ and I think it’s a common thread. A lot of people aren’t anti-gun. Guns are OK …” He pauses. “At home. And keep them at home unless you’re going to a deer lease. This is not something you want to de-sensitize people to. If someone comes in to a movie theater carrying an AK, you want people to be concerned. We’re also poking fun at the mentality that it’s right for you to carry your long rifle into a Target.”

The rally itself is July 4, natch, on the Continental Bridge from 6-8 p.m. Expect it to be jammed. (See what I did there?) Kooda’s instructions are simple: “Assemble and meander on the bridge, show off your geetars and other musical instruments for a while, then meander over to Babb Brothers or one of the other fine restaurants and watering holes that are right there.” There will be live music, because guitars.

There’s just one caveat, says Kooda on the Facebook page: “It’s about musical instruments and people, so anything that is fun, family friendly, all inclusive and non-confrontational is welcome and appreciated.”

Barry Kooda

Kooda’s Open Carry Guitar Rally began as a joke — a picture on Facebook, a 61-year-old punk-rocker’s snarky flip-off. Then it became A Thing with An Actual Schedule and Real T-Shirts — an event, man, a happening. Like he told Huffington Post (!) earlier this week, “It quickly took on a life of its own, and I’ve been playing catch-up ever since.”

Who knows how many folks will actually show: “At last count we had 800 responses,” Kooda said this morning. “But it’s impossible to tell. I have no idea. And I’m getting lots of messages from folks asking, ‘Can we do this? Can we do that?’ Hell, yes. It’s your event.”

He’s stunned, of course, by the attention the rally’s received. After all, it’s just … guitars, ya know?

“It’s hilarious to me,” he says. “Of course I am bathing in it. At the same time it’s flabbergasting. Every time it takes another leap there’s like this internal hysterical laughter. But it is a statement. When I set it up I was gonna have lots of people show up and ogle each other’s guitars. The people carrying the guns, they either want attention or are ready for the zombie apocalypse. But [Majestic Theater manager] Mike Schwedler and I were talking about it the other day. When they get together, I bet it’s like, ‘That a new AK, man? A 30-round clip? Sweet.’”

Kooda’s spearheading the rally, but has folks helping, including musician and artist Pat Ramseur and Kyle Reynolds, who’s been blogging about the event and the intentions behind it. “Satire is an oft-chosen tool of the creative set,” wrote Reynolds on Sensible Humanity this week. “It is useful when you wish to confront dangerous, extreme and abusive ideas in society without escalating an already hostile situation.”

Ross (left) and Marshall Von Erich (right) with their father, Kevin, at their WLW show in Sedan, Kansas, on April 20, 2012.

The man born Kevin Ross Adkisson on May 15, 1957, has not been back to this part of the world in almost a decade. He now spends all of time in Kauai, on a 27-acre spread dotted with houses filled with family. Over the phone Friday morning, he compares it to “a village from 3,000 years ago, just all of us in the valley.” As he speaks, roosters crow in the background. It’s still early there, but he rises before the sun. “I don’t know why,” says the man better known as Kevin Von Erich.

Kevin Adkisson as he looks these days ...

But soon, very soon, you will be able to see Kevin in the flesh, once again standing inside the squared circle: Total Nonstop Action Wrestling (or TNA) has convinced Fritz Von Erich’s son to come home for its pay-per-view Slammiversary XII, scheduled to take place June 15 in College Park Center on the University of Texas at Arlington campus. Kevin’s coming for just one reason: Sons Marshall and Ross are on the bill, and their father wanted to be there. Because, after all, it’s Father’s Day.

“I now understand how my father felt when my brothers and I entered the ring,” Kevin says in the TNA press release. On the phone, he’s even more direct: “It’s my boys.”

“You’d have to come up and see us [in Hawaii], but believe it or not, my family now is closer than the one I lost,” he says. Those who know his story know what he’s referring to — the litany of tragedies that left him as the sole surviving member of the wrestling clan beloved around the world, but especially here. Once upon a very long time ago, Kevin and his brothers — David, Mike, Chris and Kerry — lived with Mom and Dad on 137 acres in Denton County. In Hawaii, he’s recreated the Adkisson family’s paradise lost.

... and, with Kerry, the Kevin Von Erich many of us remember from our childhoods.

“I knew how the young wrestlers were when we started, and I didn’t want everyone to say, ‘You had it given to you because of your dad,’” Kevin says. “So I sent them to Japan. They sweep up the building. They bow to everyone. They built a wing. They carry the luggage. They did all these calisthenics to an insane degree and wrestled all day. They live in the dojo. They eat in the dojo. But I wanted them to come up respecting the business.”

Come Father’s Day they will officially be part of it: The TNA event marks Ross and Marshall’s broadcast debut. The pay-per-view spectacle is far removed from those old Channel 39 broadcasts featuring the Von Erich boys grappling with the Freebirds or Ric Flair. But there is another local tie: The president of TNA is Dixie Carter, a 1982 graduate of The Hockaday School.

“Growing up in Dallas, my brother and I watched the Von Erichs,” Carter says in a statement, “and I am honored to be part of bringing fans the next crop of this renowned wrestling family.”

Von Erich says he didn’t even know about the event until a week ago. And, he stresses, the trip back to Texas won’t be an easy one: He has a bad back. Has for years. It was once so bad he couldn’t get on a plane to Israel for a high-paying gig. But for this, he’s willing to put up with a little suffering. He just doesn’t plan to make a habit of it.

“I don’t see myself ever leaving Kauai,” he says. “I don’t see myself ever wearing shoes again. That may be a problem when I have to get on the plane.”

It was the lawsuit heard ’round the world last year when 86-year-old billionaire oil man T. Boone Pickens, along with three of his children, sued 59-year-old son Michael Pickens for defamation, extortion and invasion of privacy. Long story short: Michael was posting items to his now-defunct blog 5 Days In Connecticut accusing his family of abuse (emotional, mostly) and blaming them for his descent into addiction. And the oilman and his other children — Elizabeth Cordia, Pamela Pickens and Thomas B. Pickens II — wanted it to stop.

There hasn’t been anything written about the suit since April 2013, because it’s been tied up in appeals court for more than a year. Michael tried to get the suit thrown out and failed — for the most part. Dallas County District Judge Tonya Parker did dismiss a single claim brought by Pamela — “harmful access by computer,” involving a phony email he allegedly sent to her colleagues at Morgan Stanley — and the case wound up in the hands of the Fifth Court of Appeals in Dallas.

Yesterday, Justice Molly Francis restored Pamela’s claim, and the case has been sent back to the trial court.

“The appeals court decision is a clear victory for Mr. Pickens and his family,” says Jay Rosser, vice president of public affairs for BP Capital and a spokesman for the family. “They are obviously pleased the public, and now the legal system, sees Mike’s actions for what they are: a clearly malicious and defamatory extortion attempt.”

Francis’ ruling recaps what Pickens and his children have always alleged: that Michael was using his blog to extort $20 million from Pickens “to avoid having his dirty laundry aired in public.”

“When asked how he came to that number,” recaps the justice’s ruling, “Michael’s attorney said $17 million was for Michael’s claims and $3 million was for Michael to forgo giving an interview with D Magazine, writing a book, and appearing on the Dr. Phil television program.”

Lance Armstrong says his doping admission to Oprah Winfrey last year shouldn't affect the money he collected for winning all those races.

SCA, a sports insurance company, has been trying to recover the money since February 2013, when it sued Armstrong following his admission to Oprah Winfrey that he’d been doping during those victories, among others during his once-celebrated career. Attorney Jeff Tillotson is the only attorney to depose Armstrong concerning doping allegations, which surfaced shortly before SCA was to cut Armstrong a check on behalf of his racing team. SCA had signed a deal with Tailwind to pay Armstrong millions if he won those races.

Tillotson wants to put Armstrong under oath again, and the appeals court’s ruling in April opened the door for another opportunity.

“We are headed back to arbitration to assess whether Lance Armstrong should be punished for lying under oath,” said attorney Jeff Tillotson in a statement sent to The Dallas Morning News on April 24. “Next stop: His deposition. Final stop: Seeking sanctions for his outrageous behavior. As it turns out, you can’t lie under oath with impunity while also intimidating witnesses and then hope to make it all go away by tearfully apologizing to Oprah Winfrey.”

But Friday’s petition aims to stop that from happening, insisting that a deal cut between SCA and Armstrong in 2006 should be the final word in the dust-up over the millions. Armstrong, who’s also being sued by the federal government in a case worth a reported $100 million, and Tailwind are asking for the state supreme court to “issue a new order permanently staying the reconvened arbitration.”

“In the past, I cared what people said, thought or wrote,” says Armstrong. “I thought it would affect my livelihood. But that’s been decimated now. When I walk through airports now, a guy could say, ‘Hey you f—ing a–h—! You’re the biggest jerk on the face of the earth!’ I’d say, ‘Right on, pal.’” Continue reading →

An image of former Navy SEAL Chris Kyle with his wife Taya that was part of the February 11, 2013, memorial service held at Cowboys Stadium

For a second time, a federal judge in Minnesota has refused to toss wrestler-turned-governor-turned-conspiracy-theorist Jesse Ventura defamation case against Taya Kyle, the wife of slain American Sniper Chris Kyle.

In a 13-page order handed down today, United States District Judge Richard Kyle denied Kyle’s motion for summary judgment in the case involving a small passage from her late husband’s bestselling 2012 autobiography, which chronicles a bar fight Ventura insists never happened. Taya Kyle, who replaced her husband as the defendant after he and Chad Littlefield were shot to death at a shooting range about 50 miles southwest of Fort Worth in February 2012, says she has witnesses who saw the fight take place at a Coronado, California, bar on October 12, 2006. Ventura says he has witnesses who saw nothing, because nothing happened.

Click to enlarge: In October Jesse Ventura hit the road to promote his book about the conspiracy that led to the assassination of John Kennedy in Dallas.

Ventura also says has has photos from an event the next day that show no signs of an injury. And it’s those photos that have convinced Kyle this is more than a he-said-they-said argument.

“The evidence in the case does not come down to just eyewitness statements on both sides,” Kyle writes in the ruling below, which excerpts the chapter in question. “Ventura has also submitted corroborating photographs of himself at the graduation ceremony the following day in which no injuries are visible, despite Kyle’s allegation that he punched Ventura (not a small man himself) in the face with such force that he knocked him to the ground. Altogether, Ventura has proffered sufficient evidence upon which a jury could conclude that Kyle’s statements were materially false.”

The judge says there are question marks about Kyle’s story that only a trial will be able to answer.

“Ventura has presented sufficient evidence to create a genuine issue of fact as to whether Kyle knowingly (or recklessly) published false statements about him,” he writes. “Accordingly, his defamation claim will be left for a jury to resolve.”

The wrestler formerly known as The Body also wants to be paid by the publisher and Warner Bros., for whom Clint Eastwood is making the American Sniper big-screen adaptation starring Bradley Cooper as Kyle. The judge says that’s not an unreasonable request: “If the Ventura story garnered publicity and dramatically increased book sales, it does not stretch logic to believe it could have generated Kyle’s Warner Brothers contract also.”

In court documents filed Wednesday morning, SCA’s attorney fired back at Armstrong and Tailwind Sports, which owned the U.S. Postal Service team for which Armstrong raced. Jeff Tillotson writes that the three arbitrators have no choice but to revisit the agreement in light of the cyclist’s admission last year that he doped his way through the record books.

Lance Armstrong on the podium after winning the 15th stage of the 90th Tour de France on July 21, 2003

“The triggering event for the request to reconvene was not SCA’s outside communication and unilateral influence” over the panel, writes Tillotson. “Rather, the triggering event was the revocation of Armstrong’s Tour de France titles and Armstrong’s own public admission that he blatantly and repeatedly lied to this arbitration panel and made a mockery of the arbitration process.”

Its beef with Armstrong dates back a decade. SCA had a deal with Disson Furst & Partners (later known as Tailwind Sports) to pay Lance Armstrong a small fortune in prize money if he won the 2002, ’03 and ’04 Tours de France. Which he did — except SCA started hearing that Armstrong did so using performance-enhancing drugs and started poking around.

At that point, Armstrong and Tailwind sued SCA in Dallas County, demanding the dough. That led to the now-infamous deposition during which Armstrong told Tillotson that “I race the bike straight up fair and square.” Except, no, he didn’t. But no one had concrete proof at the time, and just as the arbitration panel was preparing to rule on Armstrong and Tailwind’s demands, SCA, Armstrong and Tailwind settled their dispute on February 8, 2006. They walked away with about $12 million; Armstrong got $7.5 million himself.

But in October attorneys Richard Faulkner and Richard Chernick — two members of the three-man panel — said it was time to revisit that deal. They wrote, “Hostilities between these parties resumed and continued as anticipated albeit at varying intensity. … The ability of both tribunals to address and determine disputes within the parameters of the parties’ agreements is unquestioned.” Their colleague Ted Lyons disagreed.

Lyon was appointed by Armstrong, who pays his fees. Chernick serves as SCA’s arbitrator. Both parties appointed Richard Faulkner as the so-called “neutral” arbitrator.

Armstrong and Tailwind claim the ’06 arbitration ruling was binding. SCA says it wasn’t — and that “Mr. Armstrong’s credibility as a litigant is, to put it mildly, severely impaired.” It will be up to the judge to decide who’s right on Friday. Until then you can read SCA’s new filing below. Continue reading →

In November, we brought you the tale of Berneta Peeples, the longtime reporter for the Belton Journal who was still reporting for duty at the age of 96.

On Thursday, Peeples was honored with the state’s Yellow Rose of Texas award, which recognizes women who’ve demonstrated outstanding volunteer and community service. State Sen. Troy Fraser presented Peeples with the award, calling her “a true legend in Texas journalism.”

Peeples started at the paper at the age of 17 and has worked there for more than 60 years despite leaving the Journal several times. She now uses a walker and was sidelined for a month last year after a fall. But it’s her new computer, she says, that has her threatening to retire — for real this time. “It’s driving me crazy,” she said.

Fraser’s statement noted, as the story pointed out, that Peeples might be the only stilll-working journalist to have ever interviewed a Civil War veteran. Her institutional knowledge of the town, an hour north of Austin, has made her a local icon.

An image of former Navy SEAL Chris Kyle with his wife Taya that was part of the February 11 memorial service held at Cowboys Stadium

In court documents filed this month, the former business partners of slain American Sniper Chris Kyle claim his widow engaged in “character assassination” when she sued them just before Christmas.

On December 23, Taya Kyle claimed in documents filed in Dallas County that Steven Young and Bo French are conspiring to “steal” Craft International, the tactical training company her husband helped start with a $1.9 million loan. Kyle and her attorney, Larry Friedman, allege that since Kyle was shot to death in February 2013, the pair has been “manipulating Craft’s stock, mishandling funds, diverting assets and mismanaging and usurping Craft’s contracts.”

Young and French say that despite all that, in September Taya demanded, among other things, that Craft “immediately cease using any images or references to Chris Kyle” and “publish a public written statement to the effect that there is no longer any business or personal relationship between Craft” and the Kyles, including Chris. “In short,” Young and French alleges, Taya Kyle “wanted to rewrite history.”

Taya claims she owns 85 percent of Craft, because French and Young refused to buy out her ownership “units” when given the opportunity. But their response to the lawsuit reiterates something French told The Dallas Morning News on December 26: Taya Kyle was never a “member” of Craft, but upon Chris’ death she did have the right to cash out of her husband’s interest in the company. French and Young say she never asked them to make her an offer.

They claim they made her an offer last month, which she refused, and after that she fought efforts to send the claim to a third-party appraiser. French and Young say an appraisal was finished three weeks ago, and that they’re prepared to buy her out at 85 percent of fair market value “as determined by that valuation.” (A figure is not given in the court filing.)

Young and French now say that Taya’s lawsuit “is a character assassination of Craft and its members in an effort to eliminate them as a threat to her goal of controlling all things related to Chris Kyle and to rewrite history.” And, they claim, her lawsuit is rife with irony: Taya, they say, “has sued and maligned Young and French to further her goals when they helped Chris on a daily basis as he wrestled with post-traumatic stress disorder, worked to help him write and promote his books and make other appearances, spent countless hours trying to make Craft a success and raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to support [Taya] and her children when Chris died.”

In 2011, they used public art to start a conversation about homelessness; the next year, they decorated abandoned Dallas landmarks in order to draw attention to their forgotten stories. But this year, volunteers from bcWORKSHOP are passing out presents — trading cards, to be specific, featuring 25 “Dallas Heroes” ranging from the very familiar (Judge Barefoot Sanders, hellraiser-turned-Dallas City Council member Al Lipscomb, attorney and DISD school namesake Adelfa Callejo) to the slightly lesser-knowns who made a significant impact, among them, say, fair-housing advocate attorneys Mike Daniel and Laura Beshara.

They look like regular sporting trading cards: photo on the front, stats on the back — actually, mini-biographies documenting, say, Sarah Cockrell’s involvement in the construction of the first iron suspension bridge across the Trinity River in the 1870s. In other words: They’re perfect for the kiddo in your household who collects Topps offerings and loves local history.

Click to enlarge the back of Al Lipscomb's card.

The cards were “a collective idea from the workshop,” says the man who runs it, Brent Brown. “We sat down, had an office call for ideas, people submitted them, we got together, brainstormed and narrowed it down and refined it. Then people submitted their local heroes in the history of Dallas, and from that there was a debate, and it carried forward. These are some of the heroes of the bcWORKSHOP past and present. That’s why the most important part of it is having the public submit their heroes.”

Around 9 this morning, bcWORKSHOP-pers met at their downtown Dallas HQ to fuel up on taco and doughnuts before heading out with 1,000 packs of cards, each of which contains five cards and a stick of Big Red. (Some packs will also have an index card listing all the heroes.) They were each dressed in a T-shirt decorated with an individual card; you can win one by going to the website and nominating a hero for a second round of cards. You can also use Twitter or Instragram, but of course.

If there’s a common element linking all three MLK Day of Service offerings together, says Brown, it’s the intense focus on how “Dallas is a great city, but there’s a lot of work to do. In years past we talked about homelessness and knowing sites in the city where our history has unfolded. This year illustrated how for decades individuals — some known, some unknown – made it a better city. And that’s what we hope others will do.”

You can find packs, while they last, scattered all over town — from Half-Price Books’ Northwest Highway mothership to this morning’s Martin Luther King Jr. Parade near Fair Park and points in between. Good hunting.

Until this week, there’s been little movement in that case since it was filed in Dallas County court in February and amended in June, when SCA asked an arbitration panel to take another look at the ’06 settlement.

Lance Armstrong on the podium after winning the 15th stage of the 90th Tour de France on July 21, 2003

But in court documents filed Monday, Armstrong’s attorneys reveal that two members of a three-arbitrator panel voted at the end of October to reconvene in order to address SCA’s claims related to Armstrong’s 2002, ’03 and ’04 Tour de France victories. Only Ted B. Lyons, the Mesquite personal injury attorney and former Democratic state legislator appointed in 2010 to serve as special prosecutor in the Dallas County constable case, voted against reopening the case.

The day before New Year’s Eve, Armstrong and Tailwind’s attorneys filed separate motions to stay the arbitration proceedings.

Armstrong and Tailwind claim that SCA gave up its right to that money in 2006, when they resolved following two years’ worth of litigation.

In 2004 SCA went to court in an attempt to keep from paying the bonus money when the cyclist’s friends and associates began going public with their doping allegations, which Armstrong finally copped to at the beginning of 2013 during his sitdown with Oprah Winfrey. During that courthouse tussle, Armstrong told SCA attorney Jeff Tillotson under oath that “I race the bike straight up fair and square.” That proved to be anything but the truth.

Just as the arbitration panel was preparing to rule, SCA, Armstrong and Tailwind settled their dispute, signing a compromise settlement agreement on February 8, 2006, that says, in part, that “no party may challenge, appeal or attempt to set aside the Arbitration Award.” As far as Armstrong’s attorneys are concerned, that’s the end of the story — and the end of the lawsuit.

But in a ruling signed on October 29 and made public Monday, attorneys Richard Faulkner and Richard Chernick disagree, calling the settlement agreement little more than “the private equivalent of temporary ‘cease-fire.’” Wrote Faulkner and Chernick, “Hostilities between these parties resumed and continued as anticipated albeit at varying intensity. … The ability of both tribunals to address and determine disputes within the parameters of the parties’ agreements is unquestioned.”

In a dissenting opinion signed December 17, Lyons wrote that the three-member arbitration panel does not have the jurisdiction to “re-decide claims that were resolved seven years ago.” Notes Lyon, “What Armstrong did, if true, is morally reprehensible, but the law does not allow this Panel to address it at this time.”

Not so incidentally, Lyon is the arbitrator appointed by Armstrong, who pays his fees. Chernick serves as SCA’s arbitrator. Both parties appointed Richard Faulkner as the so-called “neutral” arbitrator.

Armstrong’s attorneys claim SCA is merely trying to get the arbitrators to do what a court couldn’t: “undo” the settlement agreement. And they want the court to sign an order barring the arbitrators from adjudicating the matter further.

Below you’ll find the motion to stay, the arbitration panel’s rulings, the 2006 agreement and other court documents … just some light reading with which to begin the new year. Continue reading →